Twitch recorded 4.51 billion hours watched in the third quarter of 2026, up 4% from the second quarter and its strongest result since the second quarter of 2025, according to Streams Charts. Kick, the next-largest livestreaming-only platform in Streams Charts' rankings, grew 30.7% over the same three months. Amazon, which has owned Twitch since 2014, published its third-quarter earnings release and its quarterly report on Form 10-Q on October 29, 2026. Neither document mentions Twitch once.

The omission means that the advertisers buying Twitch inventory, the streamers depending on it and the agencies weighing it against YouTube and TikTok LIVE have to assemble a picture of the service from Twitch's own blog posts, Amazon Ads sales material and third-party analytics. Those sources do not always agree. Amazon Ads told brands in June that Twitch "commands 60% of the global livestreaming landscape." Streams Charts puts Twitch's share of tracked livestream viewing at 14.2%.

Pulse

Twitch, the live video site Amazon owns, had a slightly better summer for viewing, but a smaller rival called Kick grew much faster. Amazon's own financial reports do not say anything about Twitch, so the numbers brands use come from Twitch's announcements, Amazon's ad sales team and outside trackers, and they do not match. Through 2026 Twitch has been changing how streamers earn money and how brands can sponsor them, which matters if you buy ads there or make a living there.

What Amazon's filing says, and what it leaves out

Amazon reported advertising services revenue of $19.64 billion for the three months to September 30, 2026, up from $17.70 billion a year earlier. Subscription services revenue reached $14.01 billion, against $12.57 billion. Growth in both lines was about 11%, a PPC Land calculation from the figures in the 10-Q. For the first nine months of the year, advertising came to $56.69 billion and subscriptions to $41.16 billion.

The 10-Q defines the advertising line as "sales of advertising services to sellers, vendors, publishers, authors, and others, through programs such as sponsored ads, display, and video advertising." Subscriptions cover "annual and monthly fees associated with Amazon Prime memberships, as well as digital video, audiobook, digital music, e-book, and other non-AWS subscription services." Twitch sells video and display ads to brands. It sells monthly channel subscriptions and Turbo memberships to viewers. Neither definition names Twitch, and the filing does not say in which lines Twitch's ad sales, subscription fees or Bits purchases are recorded. It gives no Twitch revenue, user count, creator payout total or headcount.

Elsewhere, the 10-Q describes Amazon's operating cash flows as coming from "consumer, seller, developer, enterprise, and content creator customers, and advertisers." Content creators are a customer group in Amazon's own accounting language. Which creators, and on which service, the filing does not specify.

The earnings release is similarly quiet. Its highlights cover the fifth season of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, which averaged 17.7 million viewers through six games according to Nielsen, the second season of NBA on Prime and 66 million viewers for Season Four of Reacher in its first 28 days. It describes Amazon Ads Agent as "backed by trillions of shopping, browsing, and streaming signals" and says Full-Funnel Campaigns now bring "sponsored ads, display, video, and streaming TV into a single campaign" for all US advertisers. Twitch, which Amazon Ads sells through the same buying tools, does not appear in either passage.

Third-quarter advertising growth was 12% excluding foreign exchange, which Amazon said was "impacted by timing anomalies primarily related to Prime Day." That compares with second-quarter advertising revenue of $19.8 billion, up 26%, when Prime Day fell inside the quarter. Amazon guided to fourth-quarter advertising growth "in the high teens."

A lawsuit the 10-Q does not list

The legal proceedings section of the 10-Q supplements the matters disclosed in earlier filings. It describes the August 2026 complaint by the Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general over reserve prices in Amazon's sponsored ad auctions, a parallel Texas complaint naming Amazon entities including Amazon Advertising LLC, Illinois biometric privacy suits covering Amazon's voice-based AI products, and Audible credit-expiry cases in Washington and Ontario.

It does not list the class action filed on August 20, 2026 by Connecticut streamer Warren Pandiscia against Twitch Interactive and Amazon in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. That complaint alleges that about two years of streams, chat logs and clips were used to train Amazon's Nova Reel video model without consent, and puts the amount in controversy above $5 million. Amazon's catch-all paragraph says it is "regularly subject to claims" involving intellectual property and privacy, among other areas. Companies decide which matters merit individual disclosure, and the omission does not by itself indicate how Amazon assesses the case.

Twitch's quarter, measured from outside

Streams Charts published its third-quarter livestreaming report on October 13, 2026. Across the platforms it tracks, viewers spent a record 31.698 billion hours watching live content, about 0.8% more than in the second quarter. The distribution of those hours has shifted sharply.

Platform Q3 2026 hours watched Change on Q2 Share of tracked hours
YouTube 13.62 billion -13.7% 43% (Q2: 49.5%)
TikTok LIVE 10.6 billion +19% 33.5%
Twitch 4.51 billion +4% 14.2% (Q2: 13.8%)
Kick 2.04 billion +30.7% 6.4%
CHZZK 335.2 million +2.1% not stated
SOOP 333 million not stated not stated

Source: Streams Charts, October 13, 2026.

Gaming accounted for 76.9% of Twitch's watch time, according to Streams Charts, which would put gaming at roughly 3.47 billion of Twitch's 4.51 billion hours, a PPC Land calculation. League of Legends broadcasts drew substantial attention through the quarter. Marc "Caedrel" Lamont led Twitch's streamer rankings by hours watched, ahead of TheBurntPeanut.

The comparison point matters. The second quarter of 2025 was the last full quarter before Twitch introduced enhanced viewbot detection on August 21, 2025, after which analytics services recorded viewership 24% below the previous week on August 22. Streams Charts' description of the third quarter of 2026 as Twitch's strongest since then therefore measures the platform against a period before Twitch's crackdown on artificial viewers. The report does not say whether or how its hours-watched figures adjust for bots.

Kick closes the gap

Kick's 30.7% quarter-on-quarter growth was a record for the platform and its third consecutive quarterly increase. Its share of tracked hours reached 6.4%. "Twitch now generates roughly 2.2 times Kick's watch time, compared with approximately 2.8 times in Q2," Streams Charts wrote. Streams Charts also flagged that Kick's leading streamer by hours watched, Hani "absi" Al-Qablan, with more than 50 million hours, showed "unusual audience patterns" in earlier research, which it said warrant caution when interpreting the figures.

On a year-on-year basis, Streams Charts gave a figure for Kick alone: total hours watched grew 19.4%. It did not publish a year-on-year comparison for Twitch.

TikTok LIVE posted the largest absolute gain. Its 10.6 billion hours were up 19% and its share of tracked viewing hit a record 33.5%. YouTube's total fell 13.7% to 13.62 billion hours, though the quarter included an all-time YouTube concurrency peak of 36.06 million viewers for the FIFA World Cup final. Twitch's 4.51 billion hours are roughly a third of YouTube's and about 43% of TikTok LIVE's, both PPC Land calculations.

A long tail, not a handful of stars

A second Streams Charts analysis, published on October 15, 2026, examined how much each platform depends on its biggest channels. On Twitch, the ten most-watched channels generated 4.8% of hours watched in the third quarter. The top 100 generated 17%. The top 1,000 accounted for 40.2%, leaving almost 60% of viewing to channels outside that group. Around 5.8 million Twitch channels generated watch time during the quarter.

The contrast with other platforms is stark. On Kick, the top ten channels produced 11% of hours watched and the top 1,000 produced 59.2%. On South Korea's CHZZK, the top 1,000 produced 80.4%. "The 100 most-watched channels generated more than half of all Hours Watched on CHZZK and SOOP Korea in Q3 2026, compared with just 17% on Twitch," Streams Charts wrote.

For brands, that structure cuts two ways. Twitch is less exposed to the departure of a single star than its rivals. But reaching a large share of its audience through sponsorships means working with many mid-sized and small channels rather than a few headline names, which is precisely the market Twitch has spent 2026 trying to open up.

Two numbers for one market

Amazon Ads' recap of TwitchCon Europe, published on June 9, 2026, states that "Twitch commands 60% of the global livestreaming landscape." It does not say which platforms that landscape includes, which metric it uses or which period it covers. The same page says that nearly 70% of Twitch's 105 million-plus monthly visitors are aged 18 to 34, and that adult Gen Z and millennial viewers spend more than 75 minutes per visit on average.

Streams Charts, with YouTube and TikTok LIVE in its denominator, puts Twitch at 14.2% of tracked hours. One way to arrive near 60% from Streams Charts' own third-quarter data is to remove those two platforms: Twitch's 4.51 billion hours equal about 60.3% of the roughly 7.48 billion hours recorded on the remaining tracked platforms, a PPC Land calculation. Whether Amazon Ads used a comparable definition, it did not say. The two figures also cover different periods.

Audience counts vary just as widely. In May, Alan Moss, Amazon's vice president of global advertising sales, said five million streamers go live each month to a global audience of more than 105 million viewers. The Pandiscia complaint describes Twitch as having more than 240 million monthly active users and 26 million to 30 million daily visitors. An undated Amazon Ads guide cites an average of 35 million daily users, sourced to Twitch internal data from 2022. Twitch's advertising site says the community watched more than 1.3 trillion minutes of content in 2023. None of these figures appears in Amazon's filings, so none carries the review that applies to reported financial results.

A year of rebuilding how streamers earn

Twitch's own announcements through 2026 have concentrated less on advertising than on what it calls monetization: the ways viewers pay creators directly, and the rules on who can be paid.

On May 13, 2026, Twitch said that "Channel Points, subs, emotes, badges, and Bits will be available to eligible streamers globally over the course of a week," under a programme titled Monetization for All, in a post by Mike Minton, Twitch's chief product officer. Streamers still need Partner or Affiliate status to receive a payout, with a $50 minimum payout threshold. A Spendable Balance feature, which lets streamers spend their unpaid earnings on Bits and gift subs, was available only in the United States, with a wider rollout planned during the year. The same post lists lower thresholds for Affiliate status: four hours of streaming instead of eight, four different days instead of seven, 25 followers instead of 50, and at least three average concurrent viewers on four different days.

Six days later, on May 19, Minton set out where viewer money actually goes. "More than a third of viewer spending goes toward Hype Trains alone," he wrote, referring to the chat-wide events triggered when several viewers pay in quick succession. Twitch introduced Creator Badge Drops, which let streamers set unlock rules based on subs or minutes watched; participants who set up custom badges during testing saw up to 50% more gift sub revenue on the first day of an event, against their monthly average. Community Trains, a rarer Hype Train variant still in testing, could earn twice as much as standard Hype Trains, according to Twitch.

At TwitchCon Europe in Rotterdam at the end of May, Twitch added more figures. Streamer-Led Promos, which offer a 35% discount on gift sub bundles, had produced more than 450,000 promotions since launch and up to 80% more gift subs during promotional events; the maximum promotional window rose 20% to 96 hours. More than 36 million viewers had claimed a Drop on a streamer's channel over the previous year, and subscription-gated Drops had put an additional $11 million into streamers' pockets. Eurozone streamers, who Twitch said had lost 1% to 2.5% of earnings to currency conversion, would from the summer receive SEPA payouts in euros with no conversion fees and lower transfer costs.

None of these posts discloses Twitch's revenue split on subs, Bits or Hype Trains. They also leave out how much Twitch keeps.

Sponsorships move down the ladder

The creator economy pitch that Twitch makes to brands rests on sponsorships rather than standard ad slots, and 2026 brought the most significant change to who can take part. On May 30, Twitch said that "this year, we've already seen three times the number of streamers participating in Creator Sponsorships compared to 2025." Its Bounty Board, a marketplace of paid brand campaigns, was folded into Creator Sponsorships through Open Invite campaigns for Partners and Affiliates. A Minecraft campaign drew more than 6,000 participating streamers, more than half of them Affiliates.

On August 20, 2026, Twitch extended sponsorships to Affiliates generally, saying that "starting today, Affiliates can get discovered, execute campaigns, and get paid by brands through sponsorships on Twitch." Brands can invite all Affiliates globally to their first sponsorship on Twitch, and Affiliates are included in select campaigns where they meet a brand's criteria. To qualify, Affiliates must be "Creator Sponsorship Certified," through a self-paced course on Twitch's Creator Camp. Twitch named Wehype as a third-party partner, with Electronic Arts offering a Battlefield sponsorship through it. Twitch did not disclose payout rates or its commission.

Twitch also began rolling out Gameplay Ads, which can be used as part of a Creator Sponsorship, with THQ Nordic and IO Interactive, the studio behind Hitman: World of Assassination, as launch partners. Twitch said it planned to expand regional support beyond North America to Europe and Asia. It gave no dates.

Twitch's in-house route is its Brand Partnership Studio, which Amazon Ads says has executed more than 1,650 creator-led campaigns globally since 2020. Its Rotterdam recap cited a 10-hour Premier Inn livestream hosted by Danny Aarons, the first activation on Twitch by a UK hospitality brand, which recorded 8.9 million minutes watched, more than 881,000 unique viewers and more than 36,000 chat interactions. A campaign for a Spanish regional tourism board, built around five creators in a custom Minecraft world featuring Andalusian landmarks, recorded 11.1 million viewing minutes and click-through rates 3.6 times the national tourism industry standard, according to Amazon Ads. Neither case study discloses spend.

Amazon Ads also announced two AI tools for sponsored streams: Chat Sentiment Analysis, which "uses AI-powered language analysis to evaluate chat messages during sponsored streams, giving advertisers audience reaction breakdowns by sentiment," and Campaign Assist, which gives creators private, real-time prompts on missed talking points. Andrea Garabedian, a director at Amazon Ads, framed the tools as a response to advertiser caution. "When brands consistently see that campaigns are delivered successfully, they become more comfortable investing in live environments and more likely to continue funding creator collaborations over time," she said.

The ad product, and a push for more ad time

Standard Twitch advertising is bought through Amazon's demand-side platform, where Twitch inventory and audiences have been available since September 2020. Twitch inventory was folded into Amazon's first-party portfolio alongside Fire TV, Fire Tablet, Alexa and IMDb on January 15, 2025, and Amazon's May 2026 Upfront at New York's Beacon Theatre included what PPC Land described as a reaffirmation of Twitch's role in the funnel. Campaigns are measurable through Amazon Marketing Cloud, according to Amazon Ads.

Amazon Ads describes the core format plainly. "Video ads on Twitch are unskippable and always above the fold," its guide states. A proprietary delivery method called SureStream stitches video creative into the broadcast itself, reaching connected TV, console and ad-blocking desktop users. Ad breaks run from 30 seconds to three minutes. Whether to run mid-roll breaks is up to the streamer, and there is a trade-off built into the system: "Regularly running ad breaks during a stream can disable pre-rolls, meaning that new viewers will not typically see an ad when they first join a channel." High-impact video display campaigns on homepage, discovery and channel pages require a minimum spend, which Amazon does not publish.

Amazon Ads' June recap puts a number on the incremental reach Twitch adds: campaigns that include Twitch alongside Prime Video "deliver +74% incremental reach," it says. It does not state the method, the markets or the period behind the figure.

That supply has a seasonal lever. Twitch emailed creators that October through December is "Peak Ad Season," according to TOS.gg, which reported on September 24, 2026 that the email suggested higher ad density could produce up to 30% more potential ad revenue per hour streamed. TOS.gg did not publish the email itself. Its own analysis noted that most streamers running scheduled ads use the minimum three minutes per hour needed to switch off pre-rolls, so moving to five minutes would add about two-thirds more ad time for, at most, 30% more revenue. Twitch does not give creators metrics on how ads affect viewer retention, TOS.gg wrote.

Five days later, TOS.gg reported remarks by Twitch chief executive Dan Clancy on the Snarketing podcast. According to TOS.gg's transcription, Clancy said Twitch had lately been using AI to identify streamers who might not match a brand, transcribing streams to judge whether content is appropriate. If accurate, that moves brand safety checks on Twitch toward automated analysis of what streamers say, alongside the category filters advertisers already set. Twitch already applied three-tier Content Controls to display advertising from April 2024, following their October 2023 launch for video, based on the GARM suitability framework.

Clips leave the platform

Twitch's most recent product moves aim at a problem the Streams Charts data hints at: discovery for the millions of channels in its long tail.

On October 20, 2026, Twitch introduced Stream Recaps, a highlight reel of clips from a livestream that appears in a shelf at the top of followers' mobile feeds and on the channel page. Clips made by the streamer and their editors are included by default, and streamers can remove, add or edit them. A voice command, "Twitch Clip That," creates a clip during a live stream and adds it to the recap. Twitch said engagement with recaps can help it pick clips to recommend to new viewers in its Clips and Live feeds.

A week later, on October 27, Twitch launched Recaps Spotlight. Under the programme, "Twitch's distribution partners may select standout clips from a streamer's Stream Recap and share them on their social media accounts," on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, with credit and a link back to the channel. "There's no cost to the streamer," Twitch said, and opting in through Clip Settings on the web is voluntary. "Participating does not guarantee that a clip will be promoted." The rollout covers Partners only; Twitch said Affiliates could be added later. It did not name the distribution partners or say whether they are paid. Net Influencer reported that Twitch is exploring clip promotion for major game launches and tentpole events.

The design is notable for what it concedes. Twitch is arranging for its creators' clips to circulate on YouTube, the platform that holds 43% of tracked live viewing hours and that has absorbed some of Twitch's biggest events. In October, Ibai Llanos took La Velada del Año, a boxing event that had streamed mainly on his Twitch channel since 2021, to Netflix for 2027 to 2029. Netflix said the 2025 edition peaked at 9.3 million concurrent viewers.

Why this matters for marketers

Twitch sits inside an advertising business that reported $19.64 billion in revenue for the quarter, and Amazon sells it through the same DSP, Ads Agent and Full-Funnel Campaigns tools it uses for Prime Video and Fire TV. Yet an advertiser deciding how much of a budget to move to Twitch has no audited Twitch figure from Amazon to work with. Hours watched come from trackers such as Streams Charts, whose quarterly report does not explain how bots are handled. Audience size comes from Amazon Ads sales material, where the numbers range from 35 million daily users to more than 240 million monthly users depending on the source and the year. The 60% market share claim has no stated definition.

The third quarter's data does support some conclusions. Twitch grew slightly while its total market barely moved, and it gained share for the quarter. Its rivals are growing faster: Kick by 30.7% in a single quarter, TikTok LIVE by 19%. Twitch's viewing is spread across millions of small channels, and its 2026 product changes, from lower Affiliate thresholds to Affiliate sponsorships and off-platform clip promotion, are aimed at making that long tail both more visible and more saleable to brands. Advertisers buying sponsorships in that tail will deal with smaller audiences per channel and with certification and suitability systems that Twitch is still building.

What remains unclear is the financial result. Amazon did not say how much of its third-quarter ad revenue Twitch generated. TwitchCon returns to San Diego from November 13 to 15, 2026, with Southwest Airlines, State Farm, Honda, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Prime Video among the listed sponsors. TwitchCon Europe moves to Berlin on May 22 and 23, 2027.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Twitch, owned by Amazon since 2014; Amazon and Amazon Ads; Streams Charts; Twitch executives Mike Minton and Dan Clancy; rivals Kick, TikTok LIVE and YouTube.

What: Twitch recorded 4.51 billion hours watched in the third quarter of 2026, up 4%, and a 14.2% share of tracked livestream viewing, according to Streams Charts, while Kick grew 30.7%. Amazon's third-quarter earnings release and 10-Q do not mention Twitch. Through 2026 Twitch opened monetization globally, cut Affiliate thresholds, extended sponsorships to Affiliates, began Gameplay Ads and launched off-platform clip promotion.

When: Streams Charts published its data on October 13 and 15, 2026. Amazon filed on October 29, 2026. Twitch's product announcements run from May 13 to October 27, 2026.

Where: Globally, with Twitch features rolling out first in the United States and North America in several cases, and TwitchCon events in Rotterdam, San Diego and, in 2027, Berlin.

Why: Twitch is sold through Amazon's ad tools, but Amazon reports no Twitch figures, so advertisers rely on third-party trackers and Amazon Ads sales claims that do not agree, from a 14.2% share of hours watched to a 60% share of the livestreaming landscape.